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Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?

Where
Have All The Cowboys Gone?By Diane Alden &
Steven FarrellOctober 11, 1999

Rural
America and its way of life are under attack. Disparate interest groups-from
the federal land bureaucracy to the environmental movement and dozens of
other organizations want control of an invention they' call "public land"
and the "ecosystem."A process has been under way for decades which
changes names and redefines concepts. A case in point: the great outdoors,
which once needed to be conserved, became an ecosystem which needs eco-management.
The name change may not seem important, but changing names is a tool used
to reshape the psychology of the public in order to prepare them to acquiesce
to a new regulatory order.

Renaming land and calling it habitat
or ecosystem doesn't change the nature of the land. But those words offer
a veneer of scientific legitimacy and mystery for what Americans
used to understand to be swamp and pasture. 'Thus, the way was paved for
a new set of control freaks to tell the rest of America how it is going
to be. The stereotypical "soccer mom" is being propagandized into believing
that they need government and environmental experts to run things "scientifically"
for the benefit of "every man."

The constant use of the term public
lands, implies a divine right for a nameless, faceless "every man" to have
control over vast areas of the U.S., even though this "every man" does
not make a home, raise kids or earn his living anywhere near that land.
"Everyman" has replaced the rancher and farmer as a sort of absentee owner,
while the government acts as caretaker and rule maker guided by an activist
environmental movement.

When the United States came into
being, the founders never had the intention of holding onto large tracts
of lands in perpetuity. Various acts of Congress, including the Land Act
of 1866 specifies that federal lands should be dispersed. Large tracts
of "public lands" were held under the dictum that they would be for beneficial
use of those living in the locality. However, instead of dispersing lands
in its control the federal government bought up more, placing it under
pleasant sounding euphemisms such as "wilderness" or "preserves." National
Parks and recreation areas were separate from these lands and for use of
the public at large. All of it came under the discretion of the Department
of the Interior and its agencies the Bureau of Land Management and the
Forest Service, and increasingly the military style U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.

At the present time nearly 2/3 of
the land in the West is under one form or another of federal government
control. Nearly 90 percent of the State of Nevada, and 66 percent of the
state of Idaho are federally owned or administered. In addition, the land
under federal jurisdiction grows daily. Millions of acres have been declared
off limits to most economic or practical use.

Just before the 1996 election, Bill
Clinton declared over a million acres in the state of Utah, the Escalante,
as protected under the Antiquities Act. He did that without making sure
it was okay with the State of Utah, its people, the congressional delegation,
or the governor. The elites were in ecstasy. Terry Tempest Williams, self
styled expert and "poet" to the environmental movement and Robert Redford
, movie actor and owner of large tracts of land in the West, were delighted.
So were the monolithic federally subsidized environmental groups and the
coal producers of Indonesia. The Escalante is home to one of the largest
deposits of clean burning coal in the world. Not surprisingly the Riyahdi
family, owners of large coal deposits in Indonesia, were contributors to
the Clinton re-election campaign.

In his 1999 State of the Union address,
Bill Clinton proposed more funding to buy more land to 'save" for future
generations. While current generations of ranchers, loggers and miners
go the way of the American Indian, buying up more land to "save" it may
make the elites happy, but it does nothing for a way of life rapidly disappearing
into the Western sunset.

Ultimately, something called the
"Wildlands" project is the goal of the guardians and proponents of "eco-management."
This project will mean that a strip of land from the Mexican border into
Canada will be off limits to human beings; except with permits and controls.
Grizzlies and wolves will have a corridor to wander and people will be
limited as to where they may live and buy land near that corridor. Al Gore's
"urban sprawl" crusade is part of this effort to lock up more land for
federal use.. His version of urban sprawl means more than too much traffic
or housing developments around Denver or Seattle. It may also mean command
and control of some American citizen's 20 acres in Montana.

The average American soccer mom does
not fully understand how the cumulative impact of environmental propaganda
as currently implemented by the federal government affects her life. Nor
does she realize how little control she has over what goes on in public
lands. For that she is paying a dear price. Environmental regulations add
a $4,200 financial burden to the average American family's costs each and
every year. It might be worth the extra money if such financial burdens
were not based on poor and often unscientifically based environmental science.

According to philosopher, scientist
and environmental expert Alston Chase, the "scientific research" of environmental
groups depends on an incestuous blend of government scientists with the
environmentalists' own hired guns, yielding so-called science that crosses
the line between ideology and partisanship at every turn. One of the results
of this combination of pseudo-science and politics is the wedge driven
between classes. It has come down to a class war between privileged urbanites
who give millions to environmental causes, and the rural poor. Deplorably,
the idealism which inspires urbanites to give to environmental groups,
is also hurrying the demise of a valuable way of life which happens to
be rural and based on the use of natural resources.

Rather than honor and help the rancher
or farmer learn from mistakes, allowing him to keep the land as good caretakers
and stewards, the environmental movement and the federal government invents
restrictions and controls and makes criminals of people trying to make
a living. In order to speed removal of these "despoilers" of the land which
it covets or wishes to turn into a kind of outdoor museum, the federal
government has come up with the plan to buy out the cowboy. The final result
is that the concept of private property is going the way of the Indian.

The environmental propaganda war
is costing the modern rancher and he must face some bitter economic facts.
According to government statistics, the average rancher is lucky if his
yearly earnings reach $30,000 after costs. Nearly 98 percent of all ranches
are small or mid-sized with less than 500 head of cattle. Twenty-two percent
of farm families live at the poverty level. The average profit is 5 to
10 cents per pound of beef-hardly enough to buy a limousine and a house
in Florida.

The environmental movement portrays
the livestock producer as an "overgrazer" who wants to kill wolves and
eagles because ranchers are "mean-spirited" and don't appreciate the "diversity"
of an "ecosystem." If the rancher is foolish enough to allow overgrazing
he puts himself out of business. This same "mean-spirited" cowboy, working
in fair weather and foul, is trying to save his foals and calves and his
way of life from both four- and two-footed predators.

The government complicates his life
further by deluging him with a blizzard of paperwork. For instance, an
environmental impact statement is required whenever the rancher wants to
do something with his land, such as put in a new stock pond or grade a
road into the back-40. Government agents regularly invade private ranches
looking for "endangered species," because the manipulation of environmental
regulations has successfully circumvented the constitutionally guaranteed
right to private property. For all intents and purposes, if an endangered
species is found on private land, such land is rendered almost totally
worthless, because the species becomes more important than any use the
rancher or farmer may have had in mind.

Urban citizens assume America will
always have its agricultural capability and that somewhere there will always
be cowboys. Statistics would indicate that if the destruction of the rural
way of life continues apace, with its loss of millions of acres of range
and farmland to "wilderness" or recreational uses or development. the United
States may become as dependent on other nations for food as it is for oil.
The self-sufficiency which is largely responsible for America's strength
and independence will become a memory. For the time being large corporate
farming seems to be the wave of the future. However, oftentimes corporate
farms are run by absentee owners who have no sense of place or pride in
community. "Sustainable communities" is the buzzword for Al Gore's environmental
program; yet current and future environmental policies destroy the very
thing they are supposed to save.

Soccer moms and cowboys pretty much
want the same things--a clean environment, better education, a decent way
of life, a growing economy, safety and security--in short, a better world
for their children and grandchildren.

In the long run, a pseudo-scientific
environmental regime administered by a growing and powerful government
bureaucracy will cost all Americans dearly--both financially and as free
and independent citizens of a once great Republic. Sadly, in the future
it will be possible that children will ask a question similar to one that
contemporary man asks about the American Indian. Only the question will
be, "Momma--where have all the cowboys gone?"